Lenovo’s new Legion 9i is a liquid-cooled, Mini LED, RGB monstrosity
For a meager $4,400, all this can be yours. | Image: Lenovo
Lenovo has announced a new Legion 9i, and it might just be the wildest thing I’ve ever seen from the Legion line. It’s coming in October, it starts at a whopping $4,399 (you know, a totally normal price to pay for things), and Lenovo is throwing in all kinds of eccentric stuff.
The company is clearly most excited about the fact that the 9i is the first 16-inch gaming laptop with a self-contained liquid-cooling system. This is exactly what it sounds like. Most laptops use air cooling to transfer heat along heat pipes to a radiator; a fluid-cooled device instead does that with water and a pump which, as you might imagine, can handle much more thermal mass. Such a system could theoretically allow the 9i to pull truly massive amounts of power (up to 230W, Lenovo claims) for a ridiculous gaming experience.
To be clear, liquid cooling is a thing that’s been tried beforein laptops of this size. But it’s generally done externally — that is, you plug a thingamajig into a little port in the back, and that thingamajig swooshes some water around inside. Lenovo’s claim appears to be that the Legion 9i can fully cool itself with this method, no thingamajig needed.
Now, this could be very exciting, but I cannot stress enough that we have no idea how well it’s going to work. Also, I feel compelled to point out that Legion cooling is already, famously, very good. The last two Legion 5i generations that The Verge has reviewed have been remarkably cool, without much noise, throughout testing. I’m sure a liquid system will make some amount of difference, of course, but how much remains to be seen.
So before we all throw our Legion 7i models out the window (and I know some of you are tempted), we’ll need to see how this performs when the units actually hit shelves.
Image: Lenovo
Colorful keyboard, and lightstrip along the edge. Image: Lenovo
Both a 330W adapter and a USB-C adapter are included in the box.
Another interesting feature is the forged carbon cover, which will give every unit a unique pattern. The design has kind of a funky vibe, and it can be neat to know that your unit looks different from the thousands of others on the shelf.
But what I’m happiest to see here is the 165Hz 16:10 Mini LED display. This has a 94 percent screen-to-body ratio, which is impressive, not just among gaming laptops but among laptops period. Mini LEDs aren’t cheap, but when you spend some time gaming on one, it can feel downright painful to go back to a regular IPS panel. I still miss the Mini LED on the Razer Blade 16, and I reviewed that half a year ago.
Image: Lenovo
Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 are supported.
And then we come to the insides. The Legion 9i will be powered by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, which is the most powerful mobile GPU in today’s gaming market. Up to 64GB of memory and 2TB of storage will be available. Good stuff.
The processor I have more mixed feelings about; it’s a 13th Gen Intel Core i9-13980HX. This is the most powerful mobile processor Intel has ever made, and it’s nothing to sneeze at. Still, it’s a bit hard to be too ecstatic about Intel machines right now because AMD’s 7945HX3D chip is hitting shelves soon, and that chip, in our testing, left the Core i9 in the dust. (The ROG Strix Scar X3D, the monstrous 17-incher that houses that X3D chip, is also a good deal cheaper than this Legion model.)
So I see this 9i device, at the moment, primarily as a wacky idea that will showcase Lenovo’s cooling solution and how much additional performance it actually brings. But if you have the cash to buy one, please know that I am very jealous of you and am cheering you on from afar.
Sony’s portable PlayStation Portal launches on November 15th for $199.99
PlayStation Portal. | Image: Sony
Sony is officially launching its handheld remote player, the PlayStation Portal, on November 15th. The portable device will stream PS5 games over Wi-Fi and features an eight-inch LCD screen running at 1080p resolution at 60fps. Sony says the Portal will launch in the US, UK, and other regions for $199.99 and, on August 31st, made it available to preorder in select countries via Sony’s official PlayStation Direct storefront.
“PlayStation Portal will connect remotely to your PS5 over Wi-Fi, so you’ll be able to swiftly jump from playing on your PS5 to your PlayStation Portal,” says Hideaki Nishino, senior vice president of platform experience at Sony Interactive Entertainment. “PlayStation Portal can play supported games that are installed on your PS5 console and use the Dualsense controller.”
The PlayStation Portal features prominent controllers on each side that look very much like Sony’s PS5 DualSense controllers. They support adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, so PS5 games will feel similar to using a dedicated DualSense controller. The PlayStation Portal will also be capable of playing media, as the homescreen has a dedicated section for it as it’s mirroring your PS5. You won’t be able to run anything locally though, so if you don’t have Wi-Fi then you’re out of luck.
Image: Sony
The homescreen of the PlayStation Portal mirrors your PS5.
Strangely, the $199.99 handheld won’t work with Sony’s upcoming cloud streaming for PS5 games. “Games that must be streamed on PS5 using a PS Plus Premium membership are not compatible,” says Sony. So the PlayStation Portal is really a way to stream PS5 games you already have installed on your own PS5 onto a handheld for remote play. You’ll need an internet connection capable of at least 5Mbps, and Sony is recommending 15Mbps for the best experience.
IGN got to test the PlayStation Portal early and in a video hands-on tech editor Bo Moore says he couldn’t notice any latency using the handheld. That will be a key part of the experience, as streaming games over Wi-Fi networks still isn’t a perfect experience for many.
The PlayStation Portal doesn’t have Bluetooth, so you won’t be able to connect to wireless headphones or Sony’s Pulse 3D headset. Instead, it uses a PlayStation Link wireless technology — a new proprietary standard for PlayStation devices. PlayStation Link is designed to deliver low latency, lossless audio and Sony is also launching a wireless headset and buds that support PlayStation Link.
You’ll be able to use this new headset or buds with a PS5 through a USB adapter, but with rumors of a PS5 “Slim” on the way it’s easy to imagine PlayStation Link will be integrated into future PS5 models. The PlayStation Link standard will also be available for third-party manufacturers to use. Thankfully, the PlayStation Portal also has a 3.5mm headphone jack for wired audio.
IGN reports that the PlayStation Portal’s battery size hasn’t been finalized yet, so we still don’t know how long this handheld will run. CNET says Sony is targeting something similar to the DualSense battery life, so around seven to nine hours.
The PlayStation Portal was previously known as Project Q and was officially announced in May, with a rumored release date in November. Sony followed up with the pricing details in mid-August, but it’s nice to finally know when PlayStation fans will be able to get their hands on the PlayStation Portal.
Update August 31st, 5:45PM ET: Added details from Sony regarding the PlayStation Portal’s official launch date.
Microsoft is unbundling Teams from Office in Europe to address regulator concerns
Illustration: The Verge
Microsoft will start unbundling Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 productivity suites in EU markets in October. The move is designed to avoid further antitrust scrutiny, after the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams software with the Office productivity suite last month.
“Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission’s investigation continues and we cooperate with it,” says Nanna-Louise Linde, VP of Microsoft european government affairs. “These changes will impact our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.”
The unbundling means that enterprise customers in EU markets will be able to purchase Microsoft 365 subscriptions at a lower monthly price without Teams, or have to buy a standalone version of Teams at a list price of €5 per month or €60 per year. “We will instead simply sell these offerings without Teams at a lower price (€2 less per month or €24 per year),” explains Linde.
Image: Microsoft
A new “without Teams” option will be available in EU markets.
The new bundles and pricing will only affect new subscribers, as existing enterprise users can continue to renew their suites and add or remove seats at renewal, or even switch to these new “without Teams” plans. The unbundling is largely targeted at enterprises, as Microsoft will keep bundling Teams in its Microsoft 365 Business plans that are offered to small businesses. Microsoft will also offer a no Teams option, priced at €1 less per month for the Business Basic plan or €2 less per month for Business Standard or Premium plans.
Alongside the Teams unbundling, Microsoft is also planning to improve its documentation on interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 for rivals like Zoom and Slack to integrate into Exchange, Outlook, and Teams. Microsoft will also allow rivals to host Office web applications within their competing apps, just like how Microsoft does in Teams.
Slack originally filed an anti-competitive complaint against Microsoft with the European Commission in July 2020, just months after a global pandemic began and Microsoft saw massive growth for its Teams product. Slack alleged that Microsoft had “illegally tied” its Microsoft Teams product to Office and is “force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”
Microsoft will now have to wait on EU regulators to decide whether its unbundling of Teams from Office suites in EU markets is enough. “We believe these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the best possible solutions at competitive prices,” says Linde. “We also recognize that we are still in the early stages of the European Commission’s formal investigation. We will continue to engage with the Commission, listen to concerns in the marketplace, and remain open to exploring pragmatic solutions that benefit both customers and developers in Europe.”
Philips Hue’s new security cameras are end-to-end encrypted and predictably expensive
Philips Hue’s new wired indoor/outdoor security camera comes in black or white and can work as a motion sensor for Hue’s smart lighting and its new Hue Secure security system.
Philips Hue is moving into the smart home security space with the launch of Philips Hue Secure, a DIY security system that leverages new cameras and new sensors that work alongside Philips Hue’s smart lighting system to scare off potential burglars. When the system is triggered by a sensor, you can activate any compatible Hue lights to flash red or white and/or sound an alarm through the camera.
Philips Hue Secure is launching this fall with a wired indoor/outdoor camera ($199.99), a battery-powered indoor/outdoor camera ($249.99), a full-color floodlight camera ($349.99), and new contact sensors ($39.99) to secure windows and doors.
The Verge got an in-person preview of the new devices at IFA 2023 in Berlin this week. I was impressed by the modern look and simple magnetic mounting system, but in terms of specs, the only real stand-out features are end-to-end encryption and the tight integration with Hue’s lighting system. They are also, predictably, very pricey. These are some of the most expensive smart security cameras you can buy.
The battery-powered Philips Hue Secure camera works indoors and outdoors and has the option of a magnetic mount that you can stick in the ground.
The cameras work over Wi-Fi, have 1080p video, two-way talk, end-to-end encryption, smart alerts for people, pets, and vehicles, and a built-in siren. They double as motion sensors for the security system and then can be used as motion sensors for Hue lights when not on sentry duty.
At launch, there is no compatibility with Amazon Alexa or Google Home, although George Yianni, head of technology at Philips Hue, said that they are working on an integration to view live footage on those companies’ smart displays.
The cameras will not work with Apple Home until cameras are supported in Matter, he said. There are no plans to support HomeKit Secure Video. Instead, you’ll need to pay a subscription fee starting at $3.99 per month / $39.99 a year, per camera to view recorded footage.
Philips Hue did announce that it is finally bringing Matter support to its bridge next month, which means the new contact sensors will work with Matter, and there’s potential for the motion sensors in the cameras to show up in any Matter-compatible platform.
Here’s a closer look at the new products coming this fall.
The wired (rear) and the battery powered cameras (front) side-by-side. The cameras have almost identical features.
The Philips Hue Secure wired camera costs $199.99 and comes in black or white. It has an included magnetic wall mount, or you can get it with a desktop stand for $229.99. It works indoors or outdoors, and the cable is weatherproof, but the plug isn’t. The camera is compact and solid, but the cable management is awkward. It sticks out of the bottom in an ungainly way and uses a proprietary four-prong cable.
The cable routes through the base of the wired camera’s desktop stand, but it’s a bit clunky.
The Philips Hue Secure battery camera is $249.99 and looks like an elongated version of the wired camera. It also comes in black or white, and its battery is estimated to last four months with five activations a day. The battery is not removable — like those from Arlo and Ring — so you have to take it down to charge it. It is possible to power it with Philips Hue’s low-voltage outdoor cables ($29.99) designed for its outdoor lighting.
The battery camera also comes with a small magnetic mount, and there’s the option of a ground spike camera mount ($39.99) you can stick in the shrubs or a flower pot.
The floodlight camera is a Hue outdoor floodlight and a wired Hue Secure camera combined.
The Philips Hue Secure floodlight camera is available in black only and is launching in early 2024 for $349.99. It’s basically the wired camera attached to Hue’s existing floodlight and needs to be hardwired to your home’s wiring. It uses both Wi-Fi (for the camera) and Zigbee (for the light) to connect and is designed to be mounted to a wall, not under an eave.
The new Philips Hue Secure contact sensor comes in black or white for $39.99 for one, or $69.99 for two. They work over Hue’s Zigbee network connecting to the Hue Bridge to send an alert when the system’s armed, or to trigger lighting automations when it’s not. They are basic contact sensors; there are no motion-sensing features.
While the cameras work as stand-alone devices, you need the bridge for most security features, including the contact sensor, floodlight camera, light and sound alarms, and automations. You don’t need the cameras for the security system. According to Yanni, if you already have motion sensors and Hue lights, you’ll be able to set up security automations to flash your lights in the new Security Center in the Hue app.
The contact sensor comes in black and white and works on doors, windows, or drawers.
The Security Center is where you manage the security system and set up the different ways you want it to react when you’re home or away. When a sensor is triggered while armed, the app sends an alert, and you can take action to flash your lights, sound the alarm, or call 911 or a trusted contact directly from the app.
Arming and disarming also controls the camera’s recording state. Yanni said that when disarmed, it shuts off the Wi-Fi, so the cameras are not recording. However, they can still act as motion sensors; the wired version uses its optical sensor, and the battery version uses a PIR sensor. They then send the signal over Zigbee to the bridge.
The indoor camera with its magnetic mount and “desktop” stand.
On-device processing of smart alerts for people, packages, and vehicles, plus end-to-end encryption turned on by default, means footage should be secure and only accessible by you.
There’s no local storage, so if you want recorded video, you need to pay for a cloud plan starting at $3.99 per camera a month ($39.99 a year) or $9.99 ($99.99 a year) for up to 10 cameras. Motion-activated recorded events will be uploaded to the cloud, where they’re stored for 30 to 60 days. The cameras also work with activity zones and smart alerts, but these require a paid subscription.
My initial impression is the new cameras are most comparable to Google Nest cameras, which use magnetic mounts, have indoor/outdoor capabilities, and do on-device processing of smart alerts.
They look similar design-wise and have the same solid feel and quality materials. However, Google Nest cameras are cheaper — $179.99 for the battery-powered one compared to $249.99 for Hue’s. But Google doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption — a feature that is not common and much sought after with security cameras.
While the Hue Secure cameras are expensive and the video quality and smart alerts fairly standard, the products from this Netherlands-based company look nice, appear well-made, and offer the type of privacy protection that many people will feel is worth paying more for.
As a security system, it feels a little underdone at launch. It appears to be all manually triggered — so you have to see and act on one of the alerts (there’s no option for professional monitoring). You’d also need a lot of Hue light bulbs, or a few very expensive outdoor light fixtures, for the flashing lights to really attract any attention outside of your home, so how effective a deterrent this will be remains to be seen.
Philips Hue finally (for real this time) adds support for Matter
The Philips Hue Bridge. | Image: Philips Hue
Things are looking brighter for smart home owners. After months of delays and uncertainty, the Philips Hue Bridge is finally being updated to support the new smart home standard Matter. A software update will roll out in September, letting users connect their Hue systems with other Matter devices and apps. This means that every existing Philips Hue product will now work with Matter, all the way back to their original bulbs launched in 2012.
The news was announced by Signify, which makes Philips Hue, during the IFA tech show in Berlin, along with a bevy of other updates, including the rollout of the Hue line’s first smart security cameras and a handful of new lights.
Every smart home owner’s nightmare is being stuck with a bunch of gadgets that don’t work with each other, which is why interoperability is the name of the game these days. Matter was meant to be the fix to solve everyone’s smart home interoperability problems. First launched in the fall of 2022, the Matter standard works with every major smart home platform — including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, and Samsung SmartThings. In the year since, smart home devices have started to add support, with the list of Matter-compatible smart home devices slowly growing longer.
Image: Signify
Signify is also launching a new generation of Festavia string lights in a variety of sizes.
Although Philips Hue was supposed to get a Matter update in the first quarter of 2023, it never arrived. Hueblog.com reported in March that the company needed more time to roll out Matter support and no longer had a concrete date set for its arrival. Desperate Hue users even went as far as signing up for a developer account and downloading a beta update for Matter support, which for some led to its own set of headaches.
The Philips Hue Bridge jumping on the Matter train will change a few things for users. Hue devices communicating through Matter will work locally, meaning they may be faster and more responsive in some setups. It could also allow Hue users to connect more than one bridge to Amazon Alexa or Google Home, allowing them to add more lights beyond Hue’s 50-light limit per bridge.
Image: Signify
The Perifo track lighting system will be available in the US.
The Matter update seems pretty timely, given it’s nearing the holiday season and smart home owners may want to deck the halls with connected lighting systems. To that end, Signify is releasing some new lights this fall, too, including one particularly festive set.
The second generation of Festavia string lights adds the ability to work outdoors — not just indoors — and come in three different lengths: 100 LEDs on an 8-meter cord, 250 LEDs on a 20-meter cord, and 500 LEDs on a 40-meter cord. The lights are priced at $119.99, $219.99 and $359.99. Signify also announced the arrival of the Hue Perifo track lighting system in the US. Currently available in Europe, the Perifo system allows for wall and ceiling mounting and offers a range of customization options. The track lighting, which is available in white and black, ranges from $19.99 to $299.99. All will hit US stores in September.
IFA 2023: the biggest announcements from Europe’s big tech show
Photo by John MacDougall / AFP via Getty Images
From the smart home to foldables, here’s everything being announced in Berlin.
CES may rule the roost in the States, but over in Europe, it’s IFA that serves as the year’s biggest tech trade show. It means we’re likely to see plenty of product announcements, as well as showcases that’ll cast a light on where consumer tech is now and where it’s heading in the next 12 months.
This year, IFA opens its doors to the public on September 1st and runs through the weekend to September 5th. But much like CES, many companies like to make their big announcements in the days leading up to the show’s public opening. If September and October (Techtember and Techtober, if you will) are the year’s two big months for tech announcements, then IFA is their starting gun.
The Verge will be covering IFA 2023 live from Berlin, taking a firsthand look at all of the biggest launches, and you can follow along with all our coverage below. In recent years, IFA has acquired a reputation as being a big smart home trade show. Last year, it took place on the eve of Matter’s launch and was filled with companies making big promises about their support for the fledgling standard. So, alongside announcements from LG, Samsung, and Honor, expect plenty of robot vacuum cleaners, security cameras, and smart lights, as well as difficult questions about if and when Matter is going to let them effortlessly work together.
The Garmin Venu 3 series will finally give you credit for naps
The Garmin Venu 3S (left five models) and Venu 3 will both retail for $449.99. | Image: Garmin
Garmin is launching the Venu 3 and 3S today, and there’s good news for nap lovers. The company is debuting a new Sleep Coach feature that includes both personalized coaching and automatic nap detection.
Nap tracking is a timely addition. Sleep is increasingly a popular focus among wearables companies. Samsung, for example, has been working hard the last twoyears to build out its native sleep tracking offerings, and Google also added Fitbit’s Sleep Profile feature to the Pixel Watch. So it’s been admittedly odd that Garmin devices haven’t been able to automatically detect naps. (You’ll also be able to manually log naps as well.) This is especially true since sleep — and therefore naps — is a factor when calculating recovery and readiness metrics. At a press briefing, Garmin noted that Sleep Coach and nap detection will eventually roll out to other Garmin devices but declined to specify which ones.
The Venu 3 series will be the first Garmin watches to include a wheelchair mode. The mode will replace steps with pushes and movement reminders with weight shift reminders. Garmin says there will also be wheelchair-specific sports apps and workouts. Existing algorithms in this mode will also be adapted to be more useful to wheelchair users.
According to Garmin, the new mode was developed and beta tested with wheelchair users. At the briefing, it also clarified that, for now, this will remain exclusive to Venu 3 watches. As for why, the company said it’s to get extra feedback on what works before extending it to other models.
Rounding out the new features are bigger font sizes for those of us with terrible eyesight and audio-based guided meditation sessions. For meditations, users will be able to follow voice prompts, set intentions, and listen to white noise like ocean sounds. You’ll be able to choose from preset sessions or customize your own.
Image: Garmin
The Body Battery feature will now display more tidbits about what activities drain or recharge your energy levels.
The Venu 3 is also getting some features that are typically seen on Garmin’s higher-end multisport watches. That includes Morning Report and metrics like recovery time, workout benefits (i.e., how training impacts your body), and perceived rate of exertion. Users will also be able to create interval workouts straight from the wrist. Body Battery — a Garmin metric that visualizes your energy levels — will also give more detailed insights with regard to restful and stressful moments in your day.
While it’s nice to see Garmin debut new software, the hardware itself is only a minor improvement from its predecessor. The Venu 3 gets a slight bump in battery life at an estimated 14 days (five days if you enable the always-on display) compared to the Venu 2’s 11 days. The 3S’s battery life remains the same at 10 days (five with AOD). Both smartwatches also get the new optical heart rate sensor that Garmin debuted on the Epix Pro and Fenix 7 Pro.
Otherwise, design and size are similar to the Venu 2, at 45mm for the regular Venu 3 and 41mm for the 3S. Since these are also meant to be lifestyle watches, they’re not quite as heavy or rugged as other Garmin devices. The Venu 3 weighs in at 46g, while the 3S is 40g. The watches also sport OLED displays, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lenses, and 5ATM of water resistance.
The Garmin Venu 3 series is available starting today. Both watches will retail for $449.99. The Venu 3 comes in black and white, while the 3S will come in black, french gray, sage, pink, and ivory.
The Fairphone 5 is a little more repairable and much more modern
The Fairphone 5 with its repairable guts on show for all to see. | Image: Fairphone
The Fairphone 5 is the latest sustainably produced and repairable handset from Dutch smartphone company Fairphone. Like its previous devices, the Fairphone 5 is made with ethically sourced materials by workers who are given a living wage bonus and is designed to be easy to repair with a lengthy software support period. But this year’s model is specced-out much more like a modern midrange smartphone, with an OLED display, fast 30W charging, and dual 50-megapixel cameras at the rear.
Fairphone is taking preorders for the Fairphone 5 starting today, and the smartphone ships on September 14th in Europe. Prices start at €699 in the eurozone or £619 in the UK. That translates to roughly $758, though Fairphone has no plans for a US release for the Fairphone 5 at this time. (The Fairphone 4 did eventually release stateside earlier this year, though it did so through a partnership with Murena.)
Image: Fairphone
You get an OLED screen this time around, a first for Fairphone.
In terms of specs, the Fairphone 5 is the first Fairphone to ship with an OLED display. It’s 6.46 inches in size with a refresh rate of 90Hz and a resolution of 1224 x 2770. Around back, you’ll find a pair of 50-megapixel cameras — one main and one ultrawide — and the selfie camera contained within a hole-punch cutout is also 50 megapixels in resolution. If that sounds normal or even a little pedestrian, then that’s kind of the point — Fairphone has never been a company on the bleeding edge of smartphone specs.
Instead, Fairphone aims to compete on sustainability. One aspect of this is how easy the Fairphone 5 is to repair, with the aim of keeping it usable for longer and, hence, out of landfill. Fairphone has upped the number of repair modules in this phone to 10 because it now allows you to replace the rear cameras individually or replace the module containing the SIM and SD Card slots. Of course, the battery is still user-replaceable but is also bigger this time around at 4,200mAh, supports faster 30W charging, and is rated to survive 1,000 charging cycles.
The other important aspect of a smartphone’s longevity is software support. Fairphone is promising to update the Fairphone 5 with at least five major Android updates beyond the Android 12 it ships with as well as eight years of security patches. That should keep the phone usable from a software perspective until 2031, though Fairphone’s press release says it’s aiming for 2033 as a stretch goal. For reference, the company released its last software update for the 2015 Fairphone 2 earlier this year, bringing to an end seven years of software support, handily beating Android competitors like Samsung and Google (which both currently offer up to five years of security updates). The Fairphone 5 also ships with a five-year warranty.
The length of software support being promised for the Fairphone 5 is at least partially due to Fairphone’s use of an enterprise-focused chipset from Qualcomm, the QCM6490, which is roughly equivalent in specs to the midrange Snapdragon 778G. It’s joined by 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, expandable with up to 2TB via microSD.
Image: Fairphone
The excellent transparent Fairphone 5 next to the objectively less good blue model.
A commonly cited concern with repairable handsets is that they’re not able to offer the same kind of waterproofing as other modern phones, whose glue-assisted construction is great for IP ratings at the expense of repairability. The good news is that the Fairphone 5 has an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance, which is a slight improvement over the IP54 rating of the Fairphone 4. The bad news is that, despite this improvement, the phone still isn’t protected against full submersion. Effectively, you’re getting protection against more powerful jets of water, which is better but still not perfect.
Like the Fairphone 4, there’s once again no headphone jack here, and the handset is available in three colors; black, blue, and (the correct option) transparent.
Image: Fairphone
The transparent back shows off the user-replaceable battery inside.
Finally, as well as being designed to survive for as long as possible, Fairphone has attempted to produce the Fairphone 5 in an ethical way. It lists over a dozen materials that it’s attempted to sustainably source and says that 70 percent of these materials are either recycled or ethically mined. So there’s recycled aluminum, tin, nickel, zinc, copper, magnesium, indium, and plastics, and Fairphone has worked with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, the Fair Cobalt Alliance, and the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance in an attempt to improve the mining of other materials like tungsten and lithium. A living wage bonus is paid to the 2,000 people who assemble the phone and components like its battery, PCB, and vibration motor.
For as long as I’ve been reviewing Fairphones, my takeaway has been that they’re good entry-level phones priced like more expensive midrange phones. But as smartphones have started changing less and less with each passing year, there are fewer and fewer benefits to being on the bleeding edge of technology. With its more modern looks and specs, that could make the Fairphone 5 a much more appealing prospect. Stay tuned for our full review, coming soon.
Falsehoods Follow Close Behind This Summer’s Natural Disasters Misattributed videos, recycled lies and warped fears are fueling unfounded claims about the recent record-breaking heat, floods and wildfires.
Google leaked Google’s flagship Pixel 8 Pro, again
Illustration: The Verge
Continuing the storied tradition of Google’s Pixel devices being some of the most-leaked hardware ever, the as-yet-unannounced Pixel 8 Pro has popped up on a Google Store page. @Android_Setting on Twitter / X pointed out the image on a page promoting Google’s subscriptions and services (Pixel Pass is not among them), showing a man taking a call on a Pixel 8 Pro in Porcelain.
Sure, the device looks like the renders and images that have already leaked, including from a supposed internal Google video, but how can we be sure it’s that phone in that color? In a win for accessibility, the tipster notes that the image’s alt-text description removes all doubt, reading, “A person takes a call on a Pixel 8 Pro phone in Porcelain.”
As for Google’s leaky history when it comes to hardware, my colleague Sean Hollister already broke it down while covering a Pixel 7A leak ahead of this year’s I/O event:
Everything we know about Apple’s Vision Pro headset
Illustration: Kristen Radtke / The Verge
Apple announced Vision Pro, its long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset, at WWDC 2023. Here’s a timeline of all the details that have emerged about the device over the years and what we know so far.
The new headset runs visionOS, uses two Apple Silicon chips (M2 Ultra and R1), and can be used for up to two hours with a tethered battery pack or for as long as you want if it’s plugged in. It also uses “natural control” with hand and eye tracking as well as voice commands. The Vision Pro headset will arrive “early next year” in the US, and Apple is pricing it at $3,499 to start.
Apple had never officially confirmed that it was working on the headset, but over the years, there were all kinds of rumors about what it might make. Now we know the truth about Vision Pro, a mixed reality device capable of both virtual and augmented reality experiences. Just like the rumors said, users can switch between AR and VR using a digital crown-style dial, and depending on what they’re viewing, it displays their eyes on the front so that others know the person wearing it can see them.
Read on for all our coverage so far on Apple’s Vision Pro headset.
The Ayaneo Kun nearly doubles the Steam Deck’s battery for nearly twice the price
The Steam Deck’s biggest weakness is battery life — and yet somehow, every challenger has failed to raise that bar. The Ayaneo 2 showed us that AMD’s Ryzen 6800U wasn’t ready to compete; the Asus ROG Ally revealed that AMD’s Z1 Extreme couldn’t pull ahead if Asus insisted on matching the Steam Deck’s 40 watt-hour battery pack.
But Ayaneo may has an answer: it’s stuffing a 75 watt-hour pack into a larger, heavier handheld called the Ayaneo Kun that — it now claims — can last nearly three and a quarter hours at 15W TDP. That’s nearly double the battery and runtime you’d expect from a Steam Deck at that wattage, though it appears it wasn’t captured while playing a game, exactly.
Image: Ayaneo
Ayaneo Kun battery life, according to its manufacturer.
We’ve mentioned the Ayaneo Kun on The Vergea coupleof times before, but today the company revealed its full array of features, price, expected ship window, and that you’ll be able to crowdfund it on September 5th if you’re willing to pay with no guarantees.
Personally, I’d wait. But there’s no question that this handheld has the strongest spec sheet yet — starting with a comparatively large 8.4-inch, 2560 x 1600, 500-nit, 90 percent DCI-P3 color IPS screen.
Images: Ayaneo, Valve
Top: Ayaneo Kun. Bottom: Steam Deck.
Ayaneo seems to have heard how some people prefer the Steam Deck’s ergonomics and loads of buttons to its own previous handhelds, too — so the Kun adds bigger grips, dual touchpads (each with four distinct buttons underneath), quad back buttons, beefier triggers, and even a little kickstand reminiscent of the original Nintendo Switch.
There’s also a little Windows Hello front-facing camera underneath the back/select button for face login and streaming, something most handhelds have entirely omitted — as well as Hall Effect joysticks and triggers to avoid drift, HD linear motors for rumble (like the Switch and DualSense), and an optional 4G module for cellular connectivity. There’s a nano-SIM slot hidden underneath the kickstand.
Image: Ayaneo
And while houses the same AMD Ryzen 7840U chip you’ll find in many boutique PC gaming handhelds this year (the ROG Ally’s Z1 Extreme is a close cousin, too), the company claims its massive cooling system can crank that APU all the way up to 54 watts in its turbo mode — far higher than the 30-watt turbo on the Asus ROG Ally.
Image: Ayaneo
Is that practical? Perhaps not, as it looks like largely a 7 percent to 10 percent boost in framerates over the 30-watt mode in the company’s own tests. (Do, however, check the jump from 34fps to 43fps in The Witcher 3.) Ayaneo straight up says “54W is not recommended for daily use as the main TDP.”
But the Kun also houses a full-length M.2 2280 SSD slot for up to 8TB of internal storage, whereas the Deck and many competitors top out at 2TB because you can only fit one chip on their single-sided M.2 2230 SSDs.
Image: Ayaneo
Ayaneo is pricing the Kun starting at $1,209 retail for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, stretching all the way to $1,949 for 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. Early bird prices start around $200 less.
Image: Ayaneo
If you’re interested in the Ayaneo Kun, I would suggest three things:
First, understand that aside from battery, the biggest issue with Steam Deck competitors is that they run Windows. It’s a little counterintuitive (isn’t Windows where the games are?) but Windows is seriously unoptimized for a handheld gaming PC, trackpads or no, and I run into all sorts of annoyances that the Steam Deck has already solved.
Second, watch Taki Udon’s video embedded below. He’s a very experienced handheld reviewer who goes over the ergonomic tradeoffs in great detail.
Third, know that while Ayaneo has a pretty good track record of shipping slick hardware, the company tends to be fire-and-forget. It has a habit of very quickly moving onto its next handheld gaming PC before the previous customers are satisfied. Its software generally needs a lot of work, is not well localized for English speakers, and I’ve run into all sorts of weird bugs across the three Ayaneo handhelds I’ve tried.
Each Ayaneo handheld I’ve tried has been better than the last, though, and their new Ayaspace 2.0 isn’t bad. I bet they nail it one day.
Meta’s ‘Biggest Single Takedown’ Removes Chinese Influence Campaign The campaign began at least four years ago and spanned thousands of accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Substack and Chinese websites, Meta said.
Police won’t fine Elon Musk for illegally livestreaming while driving
Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images
When Elon Musk livestreamed a drive through Palo Alto, California on Friday afternoon, he was holding his phone — which is plainly and clearly illegal under California law. But the Palo Alto Police Department won’t be issuing a fine, it tells The Verge, because police didn’t witness the crime themselves.
“Had an officer observed the driver with the phone in their hand, they could have issued the driver an infraction ticket for violating California’s handsfree law,” writes Palo Alto PD Captain James Reifschneider.
“As no officer witnessed it happening in person at the time of occurrence, though, no ticket is forthcoming,” he told me via email.
Let me be clear: I’m pretty sure Palo Alto Police have better things to do than chase down the world’s richest man for a $20 fine. (That’s the only punishment for a first offense — you can get a point against your driving record for a second offense, but only if it happens within three years of the first violation.)
But Musk has been known to repeatedly flout the law — see my linkbox — and some are beginning to question his power. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow recently published “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” at The New Yorker, a piece of reporting that shows, among other things, how SpaceX’s Starlink satellites became so important to the war in Ukraine that the US government was forced to treat him with kid gloves.
“He is more like a nation-state than an individual in terms of the implications of his power,” Farrow told Fresh Air.
As my colleague Andrew Hawkins points out, the US government may be about to make a major decision regarding Musk — whether or not to force a recall of Tesla’s autopilot software following the NHTSA investigation into over a dozen crashes where Autopilot cars hit stationary emergency vehicles.
Reifschneider, the police captain, says that there are practical reasons why the department doesn’t ticket without personally observing a driver — they need to be able to tell a judge what they saw, verify the driver’s identity and driver’s license, and collect a license plate or VIN number for the vehicle to support the citation.
“The officer needs to be prepared to testify in court about what they personally observed (namely, that they saw the phone in the driver’s hand),” he writes.
Tech Chiefs to Gather in Washington Next Month on A.I. Regulations The leaders of Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and others are meeting with lawmakers on Sept. 13 to kick off listening sessions that may shape A.I. rules in the United States.
Microsoft Edge’s latest feature is removing features
Image: The Verge
The next version of Microsoft’s Edge web browser might end up with fewer features than before. The new Edge version 117, which is currently in beta and expected to turn stable on September 14th, according to Neowin and 9to5Google, has five features slated for removal. Those features include Math Solver, Picture Dictionary, Citations, Grammar Tools, and Kids Mode.
Microsoft previously mentioned the “deprecation” of these features in its last beta channel release notes on August 25th. The company said the reason is to “improve end user experience and simplify the More tools menu.”
Screenshot: Umar Shakir / The Verge
The More Tools menu on a stable release of Microsoft Edge.
As Microsoft tries to get more people using its Edge browser instead of the more popular Google Chrome browser, it has to find a way to differentiate itself. Sometimes, extra features just read as clutter; if you’ve never heard of the features listed above, they likely only further bloated the browser. For Microsoft, it’s probably looking to lighten the load in other areas around Edge, like tools for parents and academics, as it continues to sink in key AI features and shopping tools.
In a bid to build buzz, a whole lot of AMC shows are coming to Max ad-free
AMC’s logos as seen in the trailer for the second season of Dark Winds. | Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
A handful of AMC Plus shows, including Fear the Walking Dead and Killing Eve, will have a temporary home on Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service, starting September 1st and going through October 31st. Statements provided to multiple outlets by executives from both services’ parent companies make it clear the goal of the deal is to help AMC Plus while adding more content to Max, which is good because, with the strikes in Hollywood bringing productions to a halt and the challenges AMC is facing in the cable space, both companies probably need it.
“This promotional arrangement with Warner Bros. Discovery is a terrific opportunity to serve up some of our most popular and critically acclaimed programming to millions of Max subscribers in the U.S. for two full months,” Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks, said in a statement.
Max will feature the AMC Plus series in a branded “AMC+ Picks on Max” rail, and crucially, they won’t have ads — whether you’re subscribed to the ad-free or ad-lite versions of Max.
It's not clear if the shows announced so far are the only ones coming to Max (we’ve reached out for clarification), as the excellent Kevin Can F*** Himself, for example, does not appear to be making the trip, but Fear of the Walking Dead and the first season of the Tony Hillerman adaptation Dark Winds are. Dark Winds is currently airing its second season on AMC Plus and AMC.
Here’s the list of shows announced so far for the promotion:
Fear the Walking Dead (Seasons 1-7)
Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire (Season 1)
Dark Winds (Season 1)
Gangs of London (Seasons 1-2)
Ride with Norman Reedus (Seasons 1-5)
A Discovery of Witches (Seasons 1-3)
Killing Eve (Seasons 1-4)
AMC Plus has struggled to grow a subscriber base in a deeply saturated streaming environment, and the slow-motion death of AMC’s ancestral homeland of cable TV isn’t doing it any favors. Earlier this month, the company posted poor second quarter financial results and revealed that, rather than inching closer to its goal of hitting 20-25 million streaming subscriptions in 2025, its subscriber count had fallen by 300,000 to just 11 million paying streamers.
That’s despite having streaming rights for several high-profile, award-winning shows like The Walking Dead, Mad Men, and Hell on Wheels. The service also has several original shows, while parent company AMC Networks also owns multiple legacy cable channels, like BBC America and IFC, as well as the horror streaming service Shudder.
AMC also announced it would launch an ad-supported tier in October, and other partnerships have seen it featured on The Roku Channel (as a paid add-on), and it’s long been available as a subscription channel in both Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.
The stakes are high for AMC Plus, as featuring some of its best shows on Max — and in front of its nearly 100 million subscribers — could put more eyeballs on AMC Plus content. Whether it will help the streaming service pick up subscribers remains to be seen.
Google might recreate Apple’s satellite SOS on Android
A Pixel Fold. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Google appears to be working on a satellite SOS feature for Google Messages that would let users text emergency services from remote areas without a conventional cell signal. As spotted by developer Neïl Rahmouni, early code in the Google Messages app shows work on an integration with Garmin and its emergency Garmin Response service. Google also appears to have started work on a UI for messaging emergency responders.
Garmin’s emergency service uses the Iridium satellite network, which Iridium says is capable of delivering a signal “anywhere on Earth.” There is a big catch, though, when it comes to using satellite SOS services from Garmin: it requires a $15 per month subscription on Garmin’s own devices. So while this would be a great feature to have on your phone, you’d likely have to continually pay for access if you’re concerned you’ll ever need it.
Looks like Google Messages may use Garmin Response for the Satellite Emergency SOS
If true it could mean that Emergency Satellite messages would be available in 150+ countries https://t.co/egVqM6JaJV
Apple launched emergency SOS messaging on the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro last year. The feature directs users to point their phone in the direction of a satellite to get a connection, then lets them send a series of prewritten emergency responses, like that they have a vehicle issue or are trapped. Apple has made the service free for two years, with the implication being that users will eventually have to pay. The company hasn’t yet announced what the price will be, and there’s still more than a year to go before the first free trials will have ended.
Rahmouni speculates that Google’s service could be available in more than 150 countries. While that’s possible based on the reach of Iridium’s network, Apple’s service is currently only offered in 14 countries and not every location that its satellite provider, Globalstar, is able to reach. So it’s not a sure thing that Google’s version would launch globally.
Google isn’t alone in bringing satellite services to Android. Qualcomm is also working on adding support for SOS messaging via Iridium with a service it’s calling Snapdragon Satellite. Qualcomm’s service also works with Garmin Response. The company said in February that Honor, Motorola, Nothing, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi are all currently working on phones with hardware that supports the feature.
It’s possible that what we’re seeing in Google Messages is just the UI for phones that support Snapdragon Satellite. But Google has separately said that it’s working on supporting satellite internet service in Android 14. And if satellite SOS services are going to be offered across Pixel or Samsung phones, which don’t all use Qualcomm processors, it’ll be necessary for Google to develop its own infrastructure to support this emergency tech — so we might just be seeing the early signs of that.
Dolby might have found a way to make built-in TV speakers sound much better
Image: Dolby
Dolby Atmos is about to get a whole lot more adaptable. Today, Dolby is announcing Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, which it describes as “a new feature that seamlessly pairs together a TV’s sound system with accessory wireless speakers to deliver a more extensive and immersive Dolby Atmos sound experience.” Since it factors your TV speakers into the equation, FlexConnect doesn’t necessarily require a soundbar at the center of everything. TCL will become the first TV manufacturer to offer FlexConnect with its upcoming 2024 TV lineup, and it also plans to release a line of wireless speakers optimized to support the feature.
Dolby says that FlexConnect “intelligently optimizes the sound for any room layout and speaker setup, offering the freedom to place one or more wireless speakers anywhere in a room without having to worry about whether they are placed perfectly.” There’s no long setup required; Dolby will use the TV’s built-in microphones to locate and calibrate each wireless speaker in the room.
According to the company, “audio is intelligently spread from the TV speakers to each wireless speaker, dynamically optimizing the sound signal based on the capabilities and location of all available speakers.” So if your TV’s speakers aren’t all that capable when it comes to bass — and most aren’t — Dolby Atmos FlexConnect will know to leave those frequencies to the wireless speakers instead of pushing the integrated drivers too hard. At least, that’s the impression I get; Dolby plans to demo the new feature at IFA this week, so hopefully one of my colleagues traveling to Berlin will be able to preview it firsthand.
Image: TCL
TCL will be the first TV maker to support Dolby Atmos FlexConnect.
The whole point of FlexConnect is to let people “make the best use of room dimensions, power outlet locations, and furniture arrangements as desired without compromising audio quality.” I’ve obviously got some questions about how all of this comes together in practice. Will there be any potential latency or audio dropout issues? Won’t this dissuade some people from investing in an Atmos soundbar to put front and center beneath their TV? I’ve yet to come across a TV that produces convincing height effects with its own speakers, so I feel like that’s where I’d notice the soundbar’s absence. But you’ll likely be able to position some of those wireless speakers at the front of the room, so all sorts of configurations are possible.
We’ve seen companies like Samsung, LG, and Sony try to blend and sync audio from their respective soundbars and TVs for a fuller listening experience. Samsung calls the feature Q-Symphony. Sony’s flagship HT-A9 7.1 Atmos system also provides customers more flexibility with speaker placement. It seems as though Dolby is trying to address both points with Dolby Atmos FlexConnect.
That said, we’re talking about a feature that’s going to require a completely new TV (and of course some new wireless speakers), so that will immediately limit the appeal of Dolby’s latest innovation for anyone who has purchased a 4K HDR television over the last few years. But by the time your next TV upgrade comes around, hopefully Atmos and wireless surround sound in general will have grown much more convenient.
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The iPad Pro could get bigger screens and OLED next year, but it should do more
My 2021 iPad Pro 11-inch. | Image: Wes Davis / The Verge
As the third tier of Apple’s connected personal computing devices, the iPad sits in an awkward place in 2023. It’s a supremely capable product, there’s no doubt about that. It’s powerful and responsive; most of the models have beautiful screens; and its interface is friendly. But it’s also incomplete and insistent on doing things the Apple-prescribed way. And even as it dominates the tablet landscape, sales of iPads have withered since 2020, as Mark Gurman noted in Bloomberg today. In short: it needs more.
To be clear, I like my 2021 iPad Pro a lot. It’s a nice device for reading and solid for watching TV in bed. It’s also indispensable for following recipes while I’m cooking. But when Steve Jobs first introduced the iPad in 2010, saying it had to be better at certain tasks — email, web browsing, videos, games — than the iPhone or a laptop, I wonder if he had a glorified recipe book in mind.
It just feels like there should be more to Apple’s tablet, 13 years on. It’s an inviting device, but when I use it I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something I’m missing; I can almost always do what I want to do better and faster on another device.
Part of the issue to me is that Apple behaves as though the iPad is a fully mature product, but still doesn’t know what it actually is. Jason Snell wrote a couple of days ago on his Six Colors blog that he had given up on the iPad-only travel dream. He points at the iPad’s lacking flexibility, weird, hampered iPad versions of apps, or altogether missing software. It’s all very familiar to me, a person who normally brings an iPad on trips, but on two recent jaunts, brought my M2 MacBook Air instead and didn’t miss my tablet even a little bit.
Apple has done things over the decade-plus arc of iPad history to make it more capable, but they come up short. It can multitask like a laptop! Well, sort of, but despite improvements promised soon by iPadOS 17, Stage Manager soldiers on with weird, restrictive limitations like how many apps can live in a “stage.” Apple started putting its M-series laptop chips in some iPads, but nothing about them seems to justify the added power. Other changes over the years have felt iterative at best.
Maybe that will change soon. Apple will release a slightly bigger 13-inch iPad Pro with OLED screens and M3 chips, along with a revised Magic Keyboard with a bigger trackpad next year, writes Gurman in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg today.
Maybe that hints at a Greater Purpose for the iPad — the iPhone Pro and the Apple Watch, which both use OLED screens, both have always-on displays. And the iPhone Pro StandBy feature that turns it into sort of a smart display or alarm clock sounds remarkably similar to rumors that Apple would debut a similar feature for the iPad that would turn it into a touchscreen control center for the Apple Home ecosystem.
But it’s not totally clear from the Bloomberg article that the new iPad Pro models will be what Gurman calls the “first major overhaul” of the iPads since the introduction of the 2018 iPad Pro. But hopefully, there’s more to it, because right now, the rest of Apple’s devices are sort of leaving the iPad behind.
Threads for web, AI for bookmarks, and the best new car tech
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 3, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. Thanks to everyone who sent stuff in this week — we’re starting to get the hang of how this all works, and I really hope it’s fun and useful! I know I’ve already downloaded a terrifying number of new apps thanks to y’all.
Only one housekeeping thing today: Installer now has an RSS feed! You can add this link to any RSS reader, and it should work (let me know if you run into issues). Also, Installer’s new homepage has every edition ever — all two of them so far. We’re still working on some cool new ways you can subscribe and contribute to Installer, but hopefully, we’ve got all the basics covered now.
Oh, and before I forget: I just got five invites to the all-in-one messaging app Beeper, which I love, so the first five people to click the link can have at it. This week, I also have a new organizing app to tell you about, an infuriating but fascinating new doc you should watch, a better way to plan parties, and the new desk of your battlestation dreams. Let’s go.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
Fabric. I’ve been keeping an eye on this AI bookmarking / highlighting / stuff-saving app for a while, and this week was its big public debut. (The website says there’s still a waitlist, but I was able to log right in.) I’m digging taking notes on a webpage — right on the page — and having them all indexed and easily retrievable later.
Telemarketers. It’s not exactly shocking that a sketchy call center might have some sketchy stuff going on, but this Max miniseries is still pretty eye-opening about how it all works. Plus, there’s a good story in here about why Congress can’t figure out what to do about these scams. The third and final episode of the series is on Sunday night, so you’ve got time to catch up.
Threads for web. It took a few days, but I think the Threads web app is actually available for everybody, finally. I only had to try it like 150 times. The app’s not exactly full-featured, but at least you can post from a computer now!
“New Car Technology We Really Love,” with Doug DeMuro and Alanis King. If you ever listen to The Vergecast, you know we have… feelings about car infotainment systems. This is a really fun, really helpful breeze through those and a lot of other in-car tech, from cool Lexus mirrors to Kia’s truly genius blind spot camera. Still hate most of the UIs, though.
Ahsoka. I confess I am deeply tired of mediocre Star Wars stuff, to the point where I didn’t even bother with Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Book of Boba Fett. Ahsoka doesn’t seem to break the formula entirely, but by all accounts ismysterious and exciting and fun. I’m gonna give it a shot this weekend.
404 Media. A bunch of former Motherboard reporters started their own thing, and it’s an instant subscribe if you like wild stories about hackers, surveillance, AI, and what it means to be a person online in 2023.
Partiful for iOS. It remains a mystery to me how Partiful turned “a page for planning a party” into, like, a super-rad lifestyle product, but here we are! Now, the app’s out on iOS, and honestly, I’m in favor of anything that means fewer plans via email and Facebook pages.
The Corsair Platform:6 desk. This desk is like if you took the entirety of r/battlestations, fed it into an image-generating AI, and then asked it to design you the most gamer-y, streamer-y desk on the planet. And I kind of mean that as a compliment! No idea what this thing is going to cost, but I do love a good pegboard.
Backflip. This is a weird, mesmerizing mini-documentary about a man teaching his avatar to do the backflip he’s too nervous to do in real life. It’s funny, and I learned a lot! I also really like the idea that “machine learning” is just “practice.” There’s no magic to the process — just a lot of failing and tweaking and trying again.
Pro tips
Way back when, Clear was my favorite to-do list app for the iPhone. Maybe my favorite app, period. It had such a fun design, used gestures in really clever ways, and made making and checking off lists fun. Clear eventually sort of petered out, but now, it’s making a comeback — the app is in beta testing for iOS users now, and I’ve been using it and digging it for a while. And it’s actually about way more than to-do lists this time.
Anyway, I asked Phill Ryu, one of the brains behind Clear (and other apps like Heads Up!), to give us some tips both on how to use Clear and how to make better lists in general. Here’s what he sent back:
Get out of your head and into lists. Would you believe me if I promised listing can be meaningfully life-changing, especially when you have a cozy daily listing ritual? Once you get things organized and into lists, your mind is free to let them go for now and focus on what matters. Once you experience this, you might start listing a lot more. And for me at least, once I made a daily listing habit, it’s like life’s difficulty was taken down a half notch.
Plan the next day’s list the night before. If you’re keeping a daily to-do list, I recommend making a “Tomorrow” list. (And a “Next Day,” if you’re ambitious.) I find it really satisfying and almost therapeutic to plan my next day ahead of time. Plus, it’s an effective way to quiet those loose threads in your head before bed.
Keep an “Inspired” list instead of a “Soon” list. Throw stuff in there that you think you’ll feel inspired to do later on. And if things stick around there too long, swipe left to delete! (True story, the original Clear introduced iPhones to the modern “swipe left to delete” interaction before iOS itself, inspired by Tweetie’s pull to refresh.)
Archive ruthlessly. One issue with prolific listing is the way plans can accumulate, become stale, and eventually become a kind of nightmare closet you don’t want to open over time. Maybe that’s not the best analogy because I guess Clear’s new archive feature is, in a way, a kind of virtual closet. But it’s out of sight and out of mind and always there when you need an older list again. So it’s a great way to keep your current lists very focused on what matters to you now.
Treat yourself. There’s a crucial part of the loop of making a list of plans and checking them off that Clear pays special attention to: the dopamine you’ve earned when you get something done — that surge of satisfaction as you check off a tougher task with an extra flourish because you earned it. So we reward our listers with very satisfying sounds, haptics and animations, and even a chance to unlock some fun cosmetic or theme for the app by checking something off or achievements to unlock along the way.
Screen share
Mishaal Rahman is one of my absolute favorite people to follow around the internet. Nobody does a better job of unearthing cool new features of Android, explaining how the platform works, and turning even teeny-tiny point updates into actual information that helps you use your phone better.
I figured there can’t be many people who have thought about their phone setup more than Mishaal, so I hit him up and asked him to share his homescreen with us. He’s the first person in Installer history to have a two-screenshot homescreen! Big day. Here it is, folded and then unfolded, plus some info on which apps he uses and why:
The phone: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5
The widget(s): When unfolded, I have four widgets placed in a widget stack at the top of the homescreen. I swipe left or right to change widgets. (Samsung’s launcher also contextually changes the widget shown here, though you can only see one of the four widgets in this screenshot anyway.) The widgets are: Weather, Battery (of the phone and connected accessories), App Timers (gotta limit my Reddit / Twitter [X] usage!), and YouTube Music. And of course, at the bottom is a Google Search widget with shortcuts for Assistant / Lens.
When folded, my homescreen doesn’t show any apps but, rather, a widget stack up top with two instead of four widgets (this time, only Weather and Alarms), a Direct Dial widget to quickly call my family members, and a dedicated Google Maps widget. The reason being that the Z Fold 5’s cover screen is so narrow that I prefer to use it only for quick actions or glanceable information.
The apps: (When unfolded) I organize nearly every app I install into pertinent folders. It’s a pain to set up, but it helps me keep track of what apps I actually use and also find them more quickly.
The apps I find most useful on mobile include Elisi (a digital bullet journal), Feedly, and Rview (a Gerrit client app to view / track contributions to the Android Open Source Project and Chromium Gerrits). I’m also terminally online, so of course, I also use Reddit and Twitter / X a bunch as well as... Lemmy, Hacker News (via the Materialistic app), Mastodon, Threads. I also swap between a bunch of different messaging apps like Google Chat (mainly family), Discord, Element (for Matrix), Signal, Slack, Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp. Please send help.
The wallpaper: It’s the default live wallpaper on the Z Fold 5. I stuck with it because it reacts to me folding / unfolding the device. I’m personally hoping Google’s AI wallpaper (whenever that’s out) generator can save me from my boring wallpaper choices.
As always, I also asked Mishaal to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he picked:
Season 1 and 2 of Vinland Saga, an anime that dramatizes the life of Thorfinn Karlsefni. I found its treatment of violence / pacifism, the tragedy of war / slavery, and religion to be very compelling and am looking forward to continuing the story through its original manga!
Speaking of manga, I’ve been really, really enjoying Dungeon Meshi and am sad that it’s about to be finished! The premise sounds (and is) very silly: a group of dungeon explorers sustain themselves by eating the monsters they find as they go deeper. It might seem at first glance that the entire series is centered around this gag and it’s used only for jokes, but the series takes a more serious turn while still (somehow) remaining true to its premise. Plus, the characters are very fun!
I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and play through a full game since I beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but when I’m scrolling through Reddit and YouTube out of boredom, I’ll often watch TOTK-related content because of how varied and interesting it is! I’m a big fan of /r/HyruleEngineering, which showcases the insane feats of (in-game) engineering that the game engine allows for. I’ve seen no-hit runs, runeless runs, lockout bingo races, and of course, speedruns of the game. I guess I just really love this game!
Crowdsourced
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Emailinstaller@theverge.comwith your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week.
“I think I’m kind of a weather app guy, so I wanted to suggest my favorite weather app, Flux. 1) It looks gorgeous, and the animations are nice. 2) There are a lot of useful settings. For example, you can add, remove, and reorder all the info cards, and it lets you choose from about 10 weather data sources. 3) The widgets are extremely customizable: you can change the icons, colors, text size, and even what to do when you click the widget!” – FaviFake
“One of my favorite installs lately has been Petey, a ChatGPT companion for Apple Watch. It’s thoughtfully designed, easy to use, and surprisingly useful — being able to submit a query that pops into your head without having to go grab your phone or open a laptop is awesome.” – Nick
“Memorigi: the best to-do list app I’ve ever used. The interface is both beautiful and highly functional, it leans on gestures which make it quick and easy to move through the app. The free version is really full-featured, but I paid for the upgrade simply to support the developers because it’s become a crucial part of my daily workflow. – Jacob
“The best iOS (and other Apple devices) app anyone can download for the kitchen is Crouton. It’s an app from a single dev team (support small developers). You can organize recipes into folders and tag groups, add recipe ingredients to a connected Groceries list in Reminders, scale your recipe servings up or down (and it saves that recipe’s scaling even if the app is closed), set multiple native timers (we truly live in an age of wonders), and share your recipes in a household or once as a PDF / text / Crouton recipe.” – JB
“I’d like to recommend Raindrop. I use multiple browsers on both my phone and laptop, I use Raindrop to manage bookmarks across these devices. It has folders and tags for organization. It’s also cross-platform.” – Chethan
“You mentioned that Keen knife, and while it does look appealing, I can’t imagine ever parting with my $10 Screwpop keychain utility knife. Magnetic, no-tool blade swap, bottle opener, and it’s keychain-able. These days, my keychain has two house keys, a mustache comb, and the Screwpop knife. You also forgot to mention one of my favorite selling points for “utility knife as a pocket knife,” which is cheap, disposable blades. Security checkpoint > dispose of blade > keep spares in the car.” – Andrew
“I’ve been using this awesome little web app (this is the future!) developed by this one dude Prijan, and I love it. It’s called Kinopio (pronounced like Pinocchio but with a k). I love using this web app to take notes, make mood boards, or jot stuff down. Using it is just fun and playful and exploratory. I can’t believe people like Milanote better than this bad boy.” – Garrett
“My recommendation: TidyCal. Been loving using this. It’s like a simpler, more affordable Calendly. Pay $29 one time and get access forever. No more monthly fees. Really enjoying it.” – Dave
Signing off
A few days ago, for no particular reason, my TikTok feed became overrun by the TV show Taskmaster. It’s totally possible that I’m the last person on earth to know about Taskmaster — in which a very funny host gives a bunch of very funny people a series of very funny tasks to accomplish, and it’s all very funny — but I’ve been watching it nonstop all week. There are full seasons of the show on YouTube, but I especially love theTaskmasterTikTok page that is just an endless stream of the show’s funniest moments. I’ve never subscribed or followed so fast.
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